Finished Opensource Raspberry Pi Gateway Hat (SX1301/8 base)

Vias, a lot of Via under the chip.
There’s also a complete ground plane, which act as heat sink.
I think it is fine with the heat sink I shipped with the board though.
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For anyone watching for Sch and Pcb files,
RPI Zero version is on Github now!

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I’m glad you still had 4 in stock, I just ordered one :slight_smile: I hope it won’t take an eternity to arrive… Well, I know it’ll feel like an eternity :slight_smile:

@will3509111, gateway just arrived only took 10 days. Really happy with that.
It looks great, a nice piece of design work. I do like it has a Standard SMA antenna connector, none of this RP stuff!!
Next step is to test its thermal performance.

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@will3509111. tried to set up the gateway using the pi zero w. However I got stuck when following your TTN network setup. I’m not able to generate the gateway ID using the skript update_gwid.sh becaus there is no eth0 on my pi zero w enabled. Do I miss something?

I think you can still use the update_gwid.sh by replacing eth0 to wlan0 in update_gwid.sh

Hi @will3509111,

I’m very happy with my gateway so far. The only problem is that it seems to get halted from time to time. I don’t know if it’s software issue. But it seems so. I reboot the packet forwarder and everything goes back to normal.

Do you have any experience about this?

Best regards,

Yes I did,
I think the problem might be Packet Forwarder will exit when it receive unknown format package?

Don’t have the log though…
But I did traced a lot of exit(EXIT_FAILURE); in the code, not sure why it doesn’t skip the bad package

I have to take a look to the gw software too. I’m now with the tracker, but’s good to know. Thank you for feedback.
Best regards,

Would it be possible to use a pin strip which allows me to attach other shields to the Raspberry Pi or is it unrecommended?

Versions 3 and 2 mention stacking PI hats including the PoE hat is possible but you might want to disable the GPS if another HAT/shield is using the UART pins https://github.com/will127534/LoRa-concentrator

Specifically this one uses GPIO 7,8,9,10,11 (SPI bus) and 25 so you can probably still use a I2C or PWM shield.

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the packet forwarder is a pretty small bit of code. Why does this need to run on something as big as a raspberry pi. How about running on a moderate microprocessor running FreeRTOS + TCP?

the libloragw is already ported to STM32 https://github.com/Lora-net/picoGW_mcu
end the packet forwarder can run on smaller devices as ESP8266

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Exactly, it doesn’t really need to use Raspberry Pi as packet forwarder.
But it is easier to set up, and I think many people have one extra or previous version of raspberry pi laying around. :smile:

I hope I can build one with ESP32 though, or Atmel SAM E series MCU.

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Im working with a Sam R34 right now, and its great. ( as a node )

Hence the emergence of products like the $69 TIG = PicoGW bd + (ESP32?) MCU running Packet Forwarder/Basic Station S/w + WiFi/TCP/IP stack,simple Config AP/webserver i/f and…not much else! :slight_smile: Simple to config and deploy but not something to run all the other s/w often associated with larger scale CPU GW systems.

what does the PicoGW have inside for its radio gear?

it appears to be this one
image

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so no suprizes there, its standard Semtech stuff. Do you happen to know what the microprocessor is?

Thinking that an extension to this gateway hat is to stick a processor on it, and not have to have a seperate PI.